Regarding the wording used, "buddy" is an affective way of referring to one another between left-oriented political movements here. Extremely common in peronism but also used in several other countries from South America.
> He has the advantage of thousands of years of civilization over me. [Not sure I understood that sentence correctly.]
It refers to the bolivian/peruvian aboriginal culture from which Morales' is considered a representative so the translation is correct. It's just a political compliment, nothing more than that.
Thanks! I thought that might be what she meant, but I wasn't sure.
I'm not really sure if "buddy" is a good translation of "compañer@", but it seemed about right. "Comrade" might be an equally good translation if you wanted to prejudice people in the US against her.
"Buddy" sounds really silly. "Comrade" is closer, but at least in Portuguese that would be "camarada", which carries a rather old-style socialist nuance, not "companheiro".
"Fellow", "brother" or even "mate" sound better in this context.
Indeed the word is "companero", but its not as formal as comrade which also exists as "camarada", in this context its actually more like partner (in a professional sense) but not as informal as brother or pal in english.
> He has the advantage of thousands of years of civilization over me. [Not sure I understood that sentence correctly.]
It refers to the bolivian/peruvian aboriginal culture from which Morales' is considered a representative so the translation is correct. It's just a political compliment, nothing more than that.